[Web-SIG] ClearSilver

[Shannon -jj Behrens]

> In my opinion, ClearSilver was one of the more under-rated template
> technologies.

I think templating engines are really a matter of taste (or distaste
;)  I worked with one of the developers of ClearSilver, Paul Clegg,
but nonetheless my company decided not to use it in favor of Cheetah. 
These were the reasons I forwarded:

1. Serializing all of your data to some resource file format is silly
and wasteful when Python is on both sides.  It's better to just put
all the data in a dict or something similarly simple and just pass the
dict.  ClearSilver makes more sense when your backend is written in C.

2. I know that some Web development teams have GUI guys that are
completely in charge of the templates.  That's cool.  However, I've
never worked at such a company.  In every company I've worked for, the
GUI guys give me a template and then I'm in charge of it.  Since I'm
in charge of it, I'm not afraid of using something like Cheetah.  I
*already know* Python, so learning Cheetah is trivial.  Furthermore,
I'm a "big boy" which means I'm capable of leaving the business logic
mostly out of the view.  On the other hand, I do use Cheetah to
viciously cut down on HTML duplication.  Just because it's HTML
doesn't mean it's a good idea to duplicate stuff all over the place!

Anyway, that's my $0.02.

Happy Hacking,
-jj

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